


bricks

by qwanderer



Series: brickverse [1]
Category: White Collar
Genre: F/M, autistic Kate, implied canonical character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:39:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're not a piece of art," Neal tells her. "You're a person. An incredibly beautiful person." Then he grins. "Would you like to be a piece of art?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	bricks

Kate has always been a technically proficient artist. Anything she sees with her eyes, she can reproduce in paint or ink or charcoal. 

She doesn't know how to put on the page what it feels like inside her head. 

Neal has always told her that he thinks it must look like all the corners of everything else linked together, like all the art she has ever seen cut and stitched together seamlessly at angles that no one else has thought of, but somehow they fit. 

* * *

Kate hates being beautiful and... the way she is. People are always so sad when they look at her. When she fails at all the "normal" ways of acting that have been drilled into her. Like a damaged piece of art. What a pity. What a pity someone so beautiful is this way. 

Neal doesn't see that when he looks at her. When he looks at her, he follows the darts of her eyes and the twitches of her fingers and he sees what she sees. Kate thinks what she sees must be the most beautiful thing in the world and when Neal talks, she believes that. When Neal talks, she believes that he can see it all. The spiderweb of fascination. 

He's the only person who seems to like it better when she doesn't pretend to be normal. 

"You're not a piece of art," Neal tells her. "You're a person. An incredibly beautiful person." Then he grins. "Would you like to be a piece of art?" 

Neal explains that a person can be both. Neal explains that he has people he takes off and puts on like pillowcases. No matter which cover he wears, he's still the same pillow underneath. 

Kate likes that idea. Kate likes the idea that they can be anything to anyone but that he will always see her. That she will always know what's underneath. 

Neal still lies to her. It's the way he is. Kate thinks this is okay. He's still the only one who really sees her. And that has to be enough, because it's the most she's ever had. 

* * *

Kate likes soft pillows and blue water and the motion of hammocks and old, old red wine. Neal tells her that someday they will have all of these things. But for now they have New York, the crowded subway and the drizzle and the apartments full of crawling things and sometimes all Neal can give her is a bottle of something not too noxious and himself to use for a pillow and it lets her drift away, imagining what might be. 

* * *

Peter Burke doesn't like her. He can see right through Neal to the softness inside him but whatever he sees when he looks at Kate, he doesn't like it. 

When she visits him in prison, Neal tells her that most people, without their disguises, are all blood and guts and she is a brick wall. He tells her that Peter knows blood and guts but that Peter thinks Kate is shutting people out. Peter doesn't realize that Kate is the brick wall. Peter doesn't see how hard she's worked to build herself up, how every brick is carefully placed with intention and meaning. How everything about her is written so plain on the face of it that he doesn't know how no one else sees. 

He tells her that she is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. 

* * *

When she first got in trouble, she started a project. It's in one of her stashes, one that's deep away from anyone, safe as houses. No one can find it, she thinks, no one except Neal. 

It's a huge canvas, all filled up with shards of other paintings, lined up in odd ways where their colors match or blend. Stacked up on top of each other, filling space with an endless network of glimpses into other people's visions. 

She sews code into the seams, little dots and dashes of colors and pigments that have meaning only to them. 

_I was never made of flesh and blood like the rest of the world,_ she tells him. _You can still see me here once that's gone._

**Author's Note:**

> I might someday do a longer piece filling out this concept but for now I think this covers the essentials. Questions are welcome.
> 
> Maybe I should say something here to address the use of "dehumanizing" language to refer to an autistic character. So here's the thing: in the autistic community we often find that the qualities associated with terms like "human" and "flesh-and-blood" do not apply to us, and that the only way we can find to communicate how different our experience is is to reject those labels.


End file.
